


long way home (nonstop to takodana)

by the-reylo-void (Anysia)



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Airplanes, Angst and Feels, Angst with a Happy Ending, Banter, Exes, F/M, Flying, Gratuitous Hand-Holding, Hawaii, Late Night Conversations, Modern Era, Post-Break Up, Travel, enemies to lovers to enemies to lovers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-19
Updated: 2019-02-19
Packaged: 2019-10-31 07:28:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 19,371
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17845043
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Anysia/pseuds/the-reylo-void
Summary: “A year from now, no matter what happens, I’ll meet you here, at the place where we first met.”Months after a painful breakup, Rey finds herself on American Airlines Flight 2187, nonstop from New York to Honolulu, on her way to the islands where she and her boyfriend had first met, fully prepared for a week’s solo tumble in the Pacific like the strong, empowered, badass single lady she is.Until she boards the fully-booked flight and finds her seat in 4B.And recognizes a painfully familiar face in 4A.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Cosmogonika](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cosmogonika/gifts).



> Welcome to yet another modern AU! This one was very, very much a labor of love that would not have been possible without some fabulous beta-readers: my thanks to spirit-of-red-kyber, mnemehoshiko, and galactic-kosher-ace on Tumblr for their pre-reading throughout the writing process, and huge, indescribable thanks to my Hawaii-expert betas, orevet and naomimsmart. They were immeasurably helpful in getting this fic to hopefully feel like a trip to the islands and were gracious enough to share their experiences with me; any remaining errors in the text are entirely my own.

_The air is thick with plumeria and hibiscus carried on a sweet sea breeze, the rolling waves before them painted orange-pink in the dying light of a setting Pacific sun._

_His hand is warm and large around hers, and they stand side-by-side in front of the hala tree shading the thatch-roofed seaside hut that had seen them first acrimonious strangers, then wary allies, and now this soft, warm thing, precious and unspoken, here as the evening star appears over the green mountains and a shearwater calls its mate._

_“One year from now,” he murmurs, squeezing her hand gently. “No matter what.”_

_He kisses her in the golden glow of sunset, white sand beneath their feet, the air fragrant and green, and in that moment, she is serene, she is perfect._

_She is alive._

_\---_

“Phone charger?”

“And extra cable, and power bank, check.”

“Sunglasses? You always forget your sunglasses.”

“The polarized ones in the fancy case that Poe got me for my birthday, already packed in the front pocket of my carry-on.”

“Chapstick? You need to have chapstick. That sun is no joke.”

Rey sighed as she rolled up a thin, gauzy beach wrap and neatly slotted it next to the rest of the clothes in her hard-sided Samsonite. “I was there a year ago, Finn, I know all about Hawaii sunburn. Besides, I always have chapstick.”

“With SPF? What’s the SPF on it, let me see.”

“ _Finn.”_ Rey smiled as her roommate began to rummage through the toiletries strewn across her bedspread, and she touched his wrist. “I’ll be fine,” she said. “It’s just for a week, it’s going to rain every day because that’s what it does on the islands, and regardless of the weather I promise I’ll wear sunscreen and a hat the whole time.”

“Even when you’re hiking?” He looked dubious, raising an eyebrow as Rey laid her boots at the bottom of her suitcase. “Are those broken in enough for the mountains?”

Rey sighed and rolled her eyes heavenward in mute supplication. “Finn,” she said, “it’s going to be okay.”

Finn hesitated, then nodded, drawing her into a tight hug. “I’m worried about you being by yourself,” he murmured against the crown of her head, his voice muffled. “There, with all those memories of…” He trailed off, an unspoken name hanging thick in the air between them.

Rey closed her eyes, fisting her hands in the back of Finn’s sweatshirt. “It’ll be fine,” she said quietly. “I don’t even think about him anymore. He made his choices, and I made mine.”

Finn pressed a quick kiss to her temple, squeezing her shoulder before disentangling from their embrace. “You’re one hell of a girl, Rey,” he said, flashing her a crooked smile before chucking her lightly on the chin. “Just remember: it’s his loss.”

Rey returned the smile weakly before turning back to her suitcase and inspecting its contents, mentally inventorying what she still needed to pack. “Is Poe coming home for dinner?” she asked as she balled up a pair of socks. “I should probably eat something before I have to catch the train to the airport.”

“I think he’s grabbing Rose on his way back from the office — want me to text him to pick up food?”

“Thai, if it’s on the way.”

“Drunken noodles and tom yum soup?”

“Yes, please.”

Finn flashed her another grin before ducking out of her closet-sized bedroom. It was a tight fit, all four of them sharing what was on paper a two-bedroom unit, but that was the price of trying to live in Manhattan on a nonprofit salary.

Rey had been the last to arrive, nine months earlier, when Finn and Rose were already renting a place together and their friend Poe, a firebrand grassroots activist with more passion than sense, had set up shop in the spare room.

It had been a cold November night when Rey buzzed up to their apartment, rain-soaked and crying, a handful of her belongings in a black trash bag and her phone shut off.

(The rest of her things were likely still gathering dust in a swanky Upper West Side walk-up, if _he_ hadn’t thrown them out by now.)

Poe had generously relocated to the couch, and the temporary arrangement had become a permanent one as winter deepened and turned to spring. Finn and Rose shared the main bedroom, Rey moved into Poe’s old room, and Poe, ever the canny strategist, converted the walk-in closet off the front entryway into a makeshift sleeping pad.

Not that he was home that often — not that _any_ of them were. Not in the current political climate, not with The Resistance Network struggling to cover its overhead and hurting for funding and donations both. Poe was a hustler, with his slow grin and dashing-rogue good looks always good for an extension on their rent or just a few more dollars from a potential donor. Rose was their IT genius, keeping their systems running through countless DDOS attacks that brought other allied nonprofits to their knees.

And Finn… Finn was on the front lines with Rey, struggling to hold the line against the seemingly bottomless wealth and influence of First Order Capital. For every historical site they preserved, every public welfare initiative they spearheaded, First Order knew a corrupt real estate developer, had a greased-hand politician on its payroll.

Finn, for his part, had worked in their mailroom for years before breaking out for greener pastures with company secrets in tow.

And Rey…

She swallowed hard and glanced to the secondhand IKEA desk shoved into the far corner of her bedroom.

There, in the bottom drawer, beneath the tangle of unboxed office supplies, beneath the bundle of twice-late bills, was a creased picture salvaged from a broken frame.

Herself, bright-eyed and smiling, rosy-cheeked.

And beside her, his eyes soft and content, gentle in the way that she liked to remember, just like the last time he had…

“Hey,” Finn’s voice interrupted her thoughts as he poked his head into her room, phone tucked against his shoulder, and Rey ducked her head, purposefully rearranging the shirts in her suitcase and biting back a sudden swell of tears. “Poe wants to know if you want red curry. Though I think he’s probably going to try to steal yours because he never gets any for himself but he always wants it once we...”

“Red curry’s fine,” Rey said, voice tight.

Finn nodded and ducked back out of the room, and she could distantly hear him debating with Poe about red versus green curry (and yellow, Rose liked yellow).

They were good friends, all of them. Finn with his hundred-watt smiles and easy sense of humor, Poe with his charisma and endless passion for their work, Rose with her scrappy nature and practicality (not to mention her mechanical skills that kept their rent-controlled apartment up and running more often than not).

There was a part of her that regretted leaving them behind instead of somehow taking them to Hawaii with her. Rey frowned as she sorted her toiletries into the twice-discounted traveling bag she’d bought at Target, lingering over the slender vial of perfume she’d bought at the duty-free shop on her first jaunt to Kauai last August. It was nearly empty now, just a few drops remaining, and it hadn’t been particularly expensive to begin with.

But still…

Rey hesitated before popping off the plastic cap with her thumbnail, and her vision swam as the air was suddenly filled with the familiar scent of tropical flowers, of island mountain air and green, so much green…

\---

_She’d never known there was this much green in the whole galaxy._

_Rey adjusts the backpack on her shoulder and takes a long swig from the water bottle in her hand as she stares out at the rolling green valley stretching out beneath her. She’d gotten a few strange looks when she’d first set out on the Okelehao Trail, a skinny little thing like her mapping out one of the most strenuous hikes on the island by herself, but she’s never been one to shirk from a challenge._

_Especially with views like this, with green hills and cloud-covered mountains easing into a curved slash of white-sanded shoreline._

_She closes her eyes and inhales deeply, taking in the scent of wild orchids and rain-drenched ferns, and her hands may be rope-burned, her skin sweaty and insect-bitten, but in that moment, she is home._

_\---_

“What time is your flight again?” Poe asked around a mouthful of curry, glancing at the ticking clock hung above the formica kitchen table where the four of them were crammed in together, sharing an impressive spread of carryout Thai food from the local hole-in-the-wall place down the block.

“10:40,” Rey said, nervously tapping her chopsticks against her bowl. “And you’re sure that…”

Poe nodded. “I asked my sources in the field.”

“‘Sources,’” Rose snorted as she reached for another helping of drunken noodles. “You mean you had me hack into the closed-circuit surveillance in First Order Capital’s headquarters.”

“ _And_ asked my sources,” Poe insisted. He flashed Rey one of his trademark smiles, the kind that made most women weak in the knees (she might have been one of them, had she not known just how many women had stumbled into his makeshift bachelor pad in the front entryway). “Kylo Ren has been working 80-hour weeks for the last six months. Summer, holidays, weekends, doesn’t matter. I guess it takes some dedication to ruin that many people’s lives.”

His features darkened for just a moment before he schooled them into his familiar easy arrogance. “And even if he wasn’t, I know someone who lives in your old building. There’s been no signs he’s planning on traveling any time soon. I think you’re safe.”

“I don’t think I’d trust it,” Finn muttered. The soup in front of him was untouched. “I worked at First Order. I know what bastard’s capable of. I don’t want you anywhere near him.”

“I won’t be,” Rey insisted, setting her chopsticks down. “We may have bought the tickets together, but that was…” She trailed off, eyes distant. “That was a lifetime ago,” she murmured.

It had been a month ago that she’d gotten a reminder in her email inbox about her upcoming flight, and she’d stared at it in disbelief. It was July, and they’d broken up in November — how had Ben ( _Kylo Ren,_ she’d reminded herself, and if he wanted to wear the dark mantle of the persona he’d adopted, that was fine by her) not cancelled the trip by now?

But there it was, plain as day: one ticket, first class roundtrip, nonstop from JFK to Honolulu, followed by a connection to Lihue.

When she’d called the airline, they’d confirmed that the reservation was still active and paid in full.

As was the reservation for a painfully familiar seaside hut on the northwestern shore of Kauai.

When Finn had come home, he’d found her with her head in her hands, her laptop opened and tears running down her cheeks.

She’d debated it for two endless, sleepless nights.

What if the memories were too strong?

What if the island was ruined for her?

And worst of all… what if he _came?_

It was Rose who had ultimately convinced her to go. “You booked the trip together,” she’d said matter-of-factly. “You both paid for it. It’s not your fault that he was an asshole and forced your hand. Go and soak up some sun. Recharge. Come back ready for the fight.”

Poe’s weeks-long almost-legal reconnaissance of First Order seemed to confirm that B… that _Kylo_ was busy as ever in his new leadership position and had no intentions of leaving any time soon.

That had been a gut-punch of a different kind, a reminder of that final fight, that last tearful, charged moment.

But at least she could return to the island, return to that moment, that place where she had been at her happiest, and drink in the bittersweet of it without the pain of him at her side, where they both knew he could never stand again.

“...should probably head out in twenty or so. Are you all packed?”

Rey blinked, staring at Rose in confusion. “...what?”

Rose furrowed her brow. “I was just saying that you should probably get moving soon if you want to catch the train. Although you could always just Uber this time of night. Did you finish packing?”

“I… yeah. I did.” Rey set her chopsticks down, managing a weak smile. “I just wish I could take you three with me. We all could use a bit of a break.”

Poe grinned at her and leaned back in his chair. “When we destroy First Order,” he said meaningfully, “I say we party for the better part of a month on those islands of yours.”

Finn and Rose laughed and toasted with cooling cups of tom yum soup.

Rey hesitated for just a heartbeat before joining in.

\---

“Shit… shit, shit, _shit_ …” Rey swore as she hustled across JFK with her carry-on bag slung over her shoulder.

The consensus at the table had been that she should take an Uber to the airport, given the late hour and the, well, colorful cast of characters one tended to encounter on a late-night train. But God knew that New York traffic could go from clear to hellscape in the blink of an eye, and Rey found herself leaping from her Uber at five past ten, rushing to check her luggage, and anxiously waiting through security.

Which left her running across Terminal 8 with just five minutes left in boarding.

_33… 34… 35… 36!_

She huffed her way into the gate area, rushing up to the bewildered gate attendant and thrusting her boarding pass at her face. “I’m here,” she managed breathlessly, slumping a little as the attendant scanned her pass. “Did I make it?”

“Breathe, honey,” the attendant said with a laugh. “And yes, you made it. It’s a full flight, so I’d have said they might need to gate-check your bag, but they should have room for you in first class. 4B, last row on the right.” She smiled at Rey and handed back her boarding pass. “Have a nice flight.”

Rey breathed a heavy sigh as she walked down the jetway, clutching her carry-on bag to her side. She’d made it. A laugh bubbled up in her chest, and she could feel the start of a grin tugging at the corners of her lips.

A year later.

She was still here.

She was still _here_ , and she was going back, just like they’d promised.

No matter if he…

“Welcome aboard,” the smiling flight attendant said as she passed through the flight door, and Rey felt her earlier anxiety wash away, felt the tension in her shoulders fade as she counted rows… _one… two… three..._

Only to feel it roar back in force, her blood turning to ice, her heart freezing in her chest as she reached 4B.

As she recognized the face looking boredly out the window in 4A, dark hair wavy and careless, a pair of dark sunglasses obscuring his eyes, the sleeves of his black dress shirt rolled up to the elbows, buttons strained fit to bursting across his chest.

 _No…_ Rey thought, trembling violently as she clutched her bag tighter. _It can’t be..._

_\---_

_It takes three hours to descend the Okelehao Trail once she reaches the summit. It’s a daunting thing, hauling over ropes and navigating through thick, sharp-edged ferns, but it’s worth it when she’s back on solid ground and hitchhiking her way down to the beach village of Takodana._

_It’s an easy-going little town, edged with banana trees and towering coconut palms. The air is rich with the scent of wild sandalwood and naupaka flowers, and rain falls in a light, cooling mist. Rey rents a little bungalow on the beach from an old woman (Maz, she’d said her name was), a native Hawaiian with bottle-thick glasses, poor hearing, and a no-nonsense air._

_“Now, I’m giving you a good price because I like you,” she says, patting Rey’s hand. “Just no wild parties and don’t burn the place down. And keep clear of the chickens, they’ll get inside in a heartbeat if they’ve half a mind to.”_

_Rey grins at her, exhausted from her hike, and makes her way down to the beach with a heavy brass key in one hand._

_The bungalow is more of a hut, tiny and thatched, and it looks for all the world like the kind of classic island structure Rey had seen on the brochures she’d gotten in the mail once she’d started planning her Hawaiian jaunt. The wood is stained and aged, and the short steps leading up to the main room sag in the middle._

_But the **view** … Rey stops just outside the front door and turns to breathe it in, salt air and fragrant palms, plumeria so rich and thick she can almost taste it on her tongue. The breeze ruffles her hair, and she closes her eyes and feels the sun on her skin, revels in the sound of the waves breaking against the shore…_

_She spins and almost stumbles back down the stairs as the door opens, the doorway occupied by a broad-shouldered man, clad only in a pair of shorts, his dark hair curling near to his shoulders, one eyebrow raised curiously at her._

_“I’m going to go out on a limb and say that Maz double-booked,” he observes._

_\---_

“...excuse me,” Rey said helplessly, waving over the flight attendant. “Is there a chance I could possibly switch seats?” she whispered, glancing to the man in 4B.

The attendant’s smile faltered, and Rey’s heart fell. “I’m afraid we’re fully booked,” she said apologetically. “Is there a problem?”

Rey swallowed hard, a sense of dread settling low and tight in the pit of her stomach. “...no, it’s… it’s fine,” she said. “I… how long is this flight again?”

“Our flight time should be approximately twelve hours and twenty-two minutes gate to gate.”

Rey closed her eyes for the space of a heartbeat and screamed internally.

“...thank you,” she managed, voice tight.

The flight attendant made her way towards the cockpit, and Rey stared down at 4A, hesitating before slipping her bag under the seat in front of her and sitting down. She sighed in relief as she observed the small console between their seats. Thank God for first class — the quarters were still infinitely too close for comfort, but at least they weren’t sitting ass-to-cheek like they would have been in coach.

Now for…

Rey furrowed her brow and groped around for her seatbelt. She located the female end, but the male end was…

She followed the blue nylon strap, across her seat, across her console, to…

He was sitting on it, utterly oblivious, and she could see that his eyes were closed behind his sunglasses.

“Ma’am,” the flight attendant said as she passed by, placing a hand on the back of her seat, “I need you to fasten your seatbelt for take-off.”

Rey nodded, tugging on the male end of the seatbelt and attempting to extricate it from its current… position.

Nothing.

She tugged harder, her heart skipping a beat as the man next to her sighed and raised up just a bit, just enough for her to retrieve the seatbelt.

It was only as she was securing it and the flight attendant was moving on that she heard it, that soft, deep voice that had haunted her dreams for the past nine months, the voice she’d longed for even as she damned it, hated it, never wanted to hear it again.

“Hello, Rey,” Kylo said, not opening his eyes.

Rey froze with her hand still on her seatbelt, and she slowly lifted her head to look at him.

He was still wearing his sunglasses, his eyes hidden behind the dark lenses in the harsh fluorescent light of the plane, but she could feel him watching her, appraising, unhurried. “You look well,” he continued, idly plucking the in-flight menu from the seat pocket in front of him. “Do you want a drink?”

“I don’t want anything from you,” Rey seethed, tugging her seatbelt a fraction tighter than necessary.

He glanced at her over his sunglasses, features impassive. “It’s first class,” he said simply. “It’s free. I know you’re out of your element here, but you could pretend you belong.”

Rey glowered at him as she settled back in her seat. “Good to see that the last nine months have made you into even more of an imperious asshole than you were the last time we spoke,” she said. “I guess I’m still ‘nothing,’ right?”

Kylo eyed her levelly, folding up the menu and slotting it back into the seat pocket. “Not what I said then, and not what I’m saying now.”

“I think I remember being called ‘nothing’ by the man I…” She swallowed hard, staring straight ahead. “It’s not something you forget.”

“I said you were, but not to…”

“Not to you, yes.” Rey rolled her eyes, gripping the armrests of her seat with white knuckles. “That made it so much better.”

“I was trying to tell you how I…” Kylo sighed angrily, resting his head back against the seat as the lead flight attendant began her safety spiel.

“Look,” Rey whispered in a tight voice, still not looking at him. “I don’t know why you’re here…”

“Because I paid for this.”

“And I don’t _care_ why, but we’re stuck together for the next twelve hours and change. I suggest we avoid each other as much as we possibly can with about six inches of space between us.” She finally turned to look at him, narrowing her eyes. “No talking, no looking, no _anything._ I don’t want anything to do with First Order, and I don’t want anything to do with you.”

“You made that abundantly clear nine months ago,” Kylo murmured, and it was that same deep, dark rumble that she heard in her nightmares. He sighed again, drumming his fingers against his knee. “Fine. I have work to do anyway.”

“Oh, I’m sure you do.” Rey bit the inside of her cheek as Kylo stared sidelong at her for a long moment before closing his eyes and settling back with his arms crossed over his chest.

He still smelled the same, just a touch of woodsmoke and something earthy in the expensive cologne he wore. Still looked the same, with his dark, wavy hair and lips perpetually tilted into a frown.

Still felt the same, wrapped like choking tendrils around her heart.

Rey reached up and pressed the call button above her seat, scrubbing a hand over her face.

The flight attendant was by her seat a moment later, tapping the button and leaning down. “Can I get you something, miss?” she asked kindy.

“Jack and coke,” Rey muttered without looking up.

“Make it two,” Kylo said from beside her, eyes still closed behind his sunglasses.

\---

_It’s an honest mistake._

_Maz is well into her 90s, and her mind may be a steel trap but it’s obviously a bit rusted in places. She’d forgotten that the wayward son of an old family friend would be in town… and that he already had a key to the bungalow._

_“But I’m paying to be here,” Rey insists, averting her eyes from the broad expanse of the man’s bare chest. “What am I supposed to do? I can’t afford anything else.”_

_The man just stares at her with dark, liquid eyes, seemingly unconcerned by his state of undress or her current plight._

_Rey sighs and stares out to the ocean as if seeking its guidance, before the man sighs as well and waves her into the bungalow with an absent sweep of his arm._

_It’s a tight space, a single room with a rickety-looking brass bed, a tiny kitchenette and what appears to be a postage-stamp-sized bathroom in the northeast corner. The ceiling is so low that the man barely clears it, but his shoulders are straight, his head unbowed._

_“You can take the bed if you want,” he says, and his voice is deep like smoke and whiskey, like aged leatherbound books._

_Rey raises an eyebrow at him as she sets her backpack down at her feet. “I’m not sharing this…  closet with you.”_

_“I’m not asking you to. I’ll sleep on the beach.”_

_Rey’s eyes widen. “Doesn’t it rain all the time here?”_

_The man shrugs. “I’ve had worse.”_

_“You want to sleep on a beach on your vacation?”_

_The man stares at her with inscrutable features for a long moment. “I’m not here on vacation,” he says finally. “I’m here on business.”_

_Rey blinks once, twice, then looks slowly around the tiny bungalow. “And, what, your company put you up in the Kauai Hilton here?”_

_“Look, girl…”_

_“I have a name.”_

_“You haven’t volunteered it.”_

_Rey purses her lips in irritation, nudging her backpack with the toes of her hiking boot. “Rey,” she says finally. “I’m Rey.”_

_The man eyes her appraisingly before nodding and extending his hand. “Ben,” he says. “Ben Solo.”_

_She hesitates before taking his hand, and his fingertips are surprisingly warm against hers. “Nice to meet you, Ben.”_

_She smiles at him, squeezing his hand almost to the point of pain. “Now get out of my bungalow.”_

_\---_

Rey was no stranger to difficult flights — after all, she’d spent much of her late teens saving her pennies and winging her way off on any number of hiking trips all around the world. The law of averages ensured that she’d experienced plenty of turbulence, missed connections, and malodorous seatmates.

But sitting on the tarmac for over an hour next to her wayward ex-boyfriend ahead of a twelve-hour-plus flight to the remnants of a planned romantic liaison somehow managed to be worse.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” a voice crackled over the PA system, and Rey sighed and rested her half-finished glass against her forehead, “this is your captain speaking. Just, ah, wanted to give you another update on our traffic situation. We’ve currently moved up in position and are now eighth in line for takeoff… expect to get us moving within fifteen, twenty minutes here. Again, apologies from the flight deck for the delay, and we'll let you know about any updates to the situation.”

Rey jolted as she set her glass on the console between the seats and her hand brushed against Kylo’s as he did the same.

He pulled away and resumed glowering at the window beside him. He’d attempted to retrieve his laptop when the delay stretched into twenty, thirty minutes, only to be gently reprimanded by the first class flight attendant (“we need you to stow all electronics during takeoff and landing, sir”), much to Rey’s secret, guilty delight.

It took another half hour before they finally taxied to the end of the runway, accelerating and at last going wheels-up, and Rey sighed in relief as she was pressed back into her seat by the force of the initial ascent.

“...hey,” she said quietly.

Kylo half-turned to look at her, raising an eyebrow.

“What was that delay about, do you think?”

He was quiet for a long moment, eyeing her appraisingly from behind his sunglasses, no doubt recalling her earlier rule about no talking. “Could have been anything,” he said finally. “Probably residual weather delays from the storms this afternoon coupled with the heavy traffic volume that’s just business as usual at JFK.”

Rey nodded. “That makes sense. I just figured…” She hesitated. “Do you still have your pilot’s license?”

“You think I lost it in nine months?”

“I didn’t think you’d have time to use it, considering…” She gestured vaguely to the computer bag at his feet.

Kylo’s jaw tightened, and he settled his head back against his seat and closed his eyes.

“And your father was a pilot, wasn’t he?”

His head turned sharply, and Rey could almost feel the angry heat of his gaze through his sunglasses. “Don’t mention him,” he said, teeth grit, and she could see his fists clenched against the armrests of his seat. “Ever.”

At least that hadn’t changed, Rey sighed as she stared up at the ceiling of the plane. No matter how close she and Ben had gotten, his parents had always been a visceral sore spot.

The PA system pinged, and the lead flight attendant’s cheery voice reverberated through the cabin.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” she said, “thank you for joining us on Flight 2187, nonstop to Honolulu. We’re going to be dimming the cabin lights shortly so those of you who’d like to get some rest on this overnight flight will have an easier time. There’s a reading light located above your seat for your convenience. You may now use large electronics like laptop computers and tablets, provided they are in airplane mode.”

“Fucking finally,” Kylo muttered under his breath, retrieving his computer bag from under the seat in front of him.

“Off to make the world a worse place?” Rey couldn’t help but dig, not looking at him.

Kylo glowered at her as he extracted his laptop. “You’re so convinced that your friends are in the right, aren’t you.”

“No,” Rey said simply, closing her eyes. “Just that what _you’re_ doing is wrong.”

“What, furthering progress? Creating power and wealth?”

“At what cost, Ben?” Her voice was softer than she’d meant it to be, threaded through with old hurt and loss, and she crossed her arms more tightly over her chest and turned her back to him.

She could feel him staring at her, feel the weight of his gaze at the sound of his old name.

The name of the man she’d come to…

\---

_“Fuck!” Rey yelps, slapping her boot down on a shiny red beetle as it scuttles across the floor. “These bastards are everywhere!”_

_“What’s going on?” Ben asks as he comes into the bungalow, his hair wet and a towel draped over his shoulders._

_“These,” Rey intones, holding up her boot to show him the smashed insect remains on its sole. “I’ve been stung at least twice. One got me good on my right shoulder. Hurts like a motherfucker.”_

_“Praetorian beetles,” Ben sighs. “They’re awful. Rare, but when they get in, they tend to swarm.”_

_Rey groans and slumps over the bed, limply dropping her boot to the floor. “Are they bothering you out on the beach?”_

_Ben shrugs. “I’m used to them hanging around. I’m guessing this is your first trip to Hawaii?”_

_Rey nods, stretching and sitting up against the thin bedspread. “I had to save up for ages just for a week here. I work at a nonprofit in New York — it doesn’t pay well, and it’s an expensive place to live, but at least I know I’m doing something good.”_

_Something clouds Ben’s features, and Rey stares at him curiously. “Ben?”_

_“What’s the name of the place you work for?” he asks quietly._

_Rey chews the inside of her cheek. “The Resistance Network,” she says finally. “I’m not as committed to it as some of the others… I mean, I’m new… but they’re doing good work, even with all the odds against them. It’s a good place.”_

_Ben tugs the towel from around his shoulders and bunches it in his hands. “I work for First Order Capital,” he says bluntly._

_The name registers like a stone tossed into the middle of a dark pond, and Rey rises slowly to her feet, ignoring the insects scurrying away._

_“You work for **them**?” Rey asks, her eyes wide with disbelief. _

_Ben drops the towel to the side. “Six years now,” he says. “I’m executive VP of development.”_

_Rey shakes her head, eyes darkening as she stares at him. “You’ve helped raze affordable housing to the ground.”_

_“Yes,” Ben says flatly._

_“You’ve openly defied open space protections and bought city council members by the dozen just to get your way.”_

_“We have.”_

_“You’ve…” Rey scrunches up her face in anger, clenching her fists at her sides. “You’ve put people on the street just because they couldn’t pay back the exorbitant payday loans you extended them.”_

_Ben just stares at her, eyes dark and burning._

_Rey bites back a curse and shoves past him, out into the fresh air, to the sun and waves. “You’re a **monster** ,” she spits over her shoulder. _

_As she makes her way to the shoreline, she hears him speak behind her, softly, so softly she almost misses it._

_“Yes,” he says quietly. “I am.”_

_\---_

“Fuck,” Kylo muttered, slapping the side of his laptop with one large hand, his sunglasses illuminated by the white-blue light emanating from the screen. “It’s not connecting.”

“Maybe it hates you,” Rey deadpanned, sipping at her second drink of the evening.

Kylo shot her a withering glare over his sunglasses.

“You look like an asshole with those on, you know,” she continued, clinking the ice cubes in her glass. “It’s almost fucking midnight and the lights are off.”

“I don’t like people seeing my eyes,” Kylo said bluntly. “Is the WiFi working for you?”

“I haven’t checked. I’m more than entertained enough by it not working for you.”

He glowered at her, mouth opening to make a sharp retort.

The PA system pinged again before he could. “Ladies and gentlemen,” the lead flight attendant said, “our apologies, but at the moment our in-flight WiFi appears to be experiencing some difficulties. We’re working to see if we can get our router up and running again — we appreciate your patience. In the meantime, if you turn to the back of your in-flight magazine, you’ll see your options for on-board entertainment, including our movie, which we’ll be beginning shortly…”

Kylo angrily stabbed at the call button, grinding his teeth as the first class flight attendant came to stand beside their row. “Yes, sir?”

“I need to be able to get online,” he said tightly. “I have an important report to finish for work.”

The attendant gave him a practiced, patient smile, doubtless perfected through years of placating well-heeled men mildly inconvenienced. “My apologies, sir — I’ll keep you posted on the status of our internet service. Can I get you anything in the meantime to make your flight more comfortable?”

Kylo cursed under his breath and slumped down in his seat. 

Rey couldn’t help the grin that slowly spread across her features.

“I think I’d like a glass of champagne,” she said.

\---

_They don’t talk for two days._

_Rey texts Finn and finds out all about Ben Solo (known as Kylo Ren in the moneyed circles of Manhattan where he travels), a ruthless, rabid dog of an enforcer who’s helped bring First Order Capital into a new level of prominence in Manhattan’s seedier financial underbelly. It’s a corrupt organization at its core, a loose confederacy of shady real estate, loan sharking, and influence-buying, its operations just one step ahead of racketeering._

_They are, for all intents and purposes, the sworn enemy of everything The Resistance Network, with its emphasis on grassroots social programs and affecting social change, is struggling to preserve._

_Rey avoids him studiously at first, spending her days hiking the island trails, exploring the verdant gardens and cliffsides, and taking snaps to send to Finn and Rose._

_At night, the Praetorian beetles swarm out of the woodwork, and she lies awake in bed as she slaps irritably at them, the stinging bite on her shoulder aching more and more as time goes on._

_On the third day, she opens the door to see Ben (or should she say Kylo?) standing in the doorway with his arms full of organic bug spray, aloe vera gel, and a tube of caulk._

_“Truce?” he says._

_Rey purses her lips and rubs at the bite on her shoulder._

_“Truce,” she mutters._

_Together, they spray every inch of the bungalow with the bug spray he’d brought, and he helps her caulk along the baseboards, showing her the minute cracks where the beetles were most likely sneaking through._

_It’s nearing sunset by the time they finish, and they’re both sweaty and flushed, lying on their backs in the middle of the main room of the bungalow._

_“Come on,” Ben says, groaning as he comes to his feet and extending a hand to her. “We can cool down in the surf.”_

_“I haven’t actually been in the ocean yet,” Rey admits, taking his hand and allowing him to pull her to her feet._

_“You haven’t?”_

_“I mean… I can’t really swim. And I’ve been hiking. Did Pihea yesterday.”_

_Ben nods as they exit the bungalow, walking side-by-side to the waterline. Sea birds call loudly overhead, and a crab scuttles along in the surf as they wade into the water. It’s clear and warm, sparkling bright in the golden light of near-dusk._

_Ben dives smoothly through the rolling waves as an anxious Rey stays in the water only up to her knees. Ben’s skin is pale and smooth, unfreckled, and Rey wonders that he hasn’t burned in his time sleeping on the beach._

_“Rey!” she hears him call, and before she can react a wave rises up and smacks her down into the sand._

_\---_

An hour into their flight, and they had settled into an uneasy silence, Kylo with his AirPods in, Rey methodically solving the crossword puzzle in the in-flight magazine as _The Avengers_ played at low volume on the screen in front of them.

“Hey,” she said, poking him in the arm with her pen. 

Kylo grunted, resting his head against the window, his sunglasses slightly skewed, and for a brief moment she almost felt guilty for waking him.

“Ten letters, _second chance_.” She folded the magazine back and handed it to him. “I’ve got an ‘E’ and a ‘T’.”

“Why do you even do these when you know you’re better at sudoku?” Kylo grumbled, squinting through his sunglasses.

“Because the sudoku was already filled in.” Badly, she might add. What kind of idiot tries to put three 7s in the same box?

Kylo sighed and brought the magazine close to his face. “I can’t see this, it’s too dark.”

Rey rolled her eyes and snatched the magazine back. “So take your fucking sunglasses off.”

“Over my dead body.”

“That can be arranged.”

Kylo grimaced, settling back in his seat. “Hardly,” he muttered. “You’re the ‘good guys,’ aren’t you? Advocates of the downtrodden, torchbearers of light and goodness?”

“If by that you mean we help people, then yes,” Rey sighed, switching to another clue in the puzzle. “Four letters, ends with ‘E’, ‘away from the wind’.”

“Alee.”

Rey pursed her lips and nodded as she scratched the answer down.

Kylo was quiet for a long moment. “I helped you,” he said after a long moment. “Once. Before.”

Rey paused on the ‘L,’ dragging her pen along the margins of the puzzle.

“Yes,” she said quietly. “You did.”

\---

_Rey feels the wind knocked out of her as she’s dragged down to the wet sand, scraping her knees and crying out in pain at the feel of salt water stinging against the bite at her shoulder._

_“Rey!” Ben calls, wading swiftly to her side, pulling her up out of the surf and into his arms. She’s covered in sand, spluttering, her hair wet and unbound. “Are you okay?”_

_“Yeah,” she manages, wincing as his hand brushes over her shoulder._

_Ben frowns as he examines the broken skin. “Here,” he says, guiding her to the edge of the waterline and setting her down gently. “I’ll be right back.”_

_He rushes to the bungalow and reappears a moment later with the bottle of aloe vera gel in his hand, kneeling down beside her in the sand. “Let me see.”_

_Rey shakes her head. “It’s not bad.”_

_“I didn’t ask if it was bad, I said let me see.”_

_She sighs and pulls her hair to one side, starting as Ben’s fingertips brush over the bite, coated in soothing gel, gently rubbing it into her skin._

_“I didn’t see any Praetorian beetles at a glance inside the bungalow,” he murmurs, still massaging the aloe against the bite. “This should help take some of the sting out if they come back.”_

_Rey manages a faint smile, closing her eyes at the feel of Ben’s warm hand combined with the cool gel against her skin. “I doubt we’ll see those bastards again. I think we were more than a match for them together.”_

_She opens her eyes to see Ben offering her a smile that seems almost… shy, abashed, and her heart skips a beat._

_The sun is orange-gold at the horizon, the waves lapping at the shore, the air light with the smell of salt and pohuehue flowers._

_Ben’s hand lingers just a fraction too long against her shoulder, a gentle brush of fingertips against her skin._

_Rey feels suddenly warm, even in the cooling late-day sun._

_When his shoulder brushes up against her uninjured one as they sit side-by-side and watch the sunset together, she doesn’t move away._

\---

“You didn’t say why you came.”

Rey glanced up at Kylo as the credits to _The Avengers_ began to roll. Neither of them had really watched it.

She shrugged, taking up her magazine again. “It was paid for,” she said. “Kauai is beautiful. I have fond memories there.”

“And we promised,” Kylo murmured.

Rey stared at him sidelong, lips pursed in irritation. “Since when did that mean anything to you?” she asked hotly.

“It meant _everything_ to me,” Kylo snapped. “I’m not the one who left.”

“You didn’t give me a choice!” Rey bit back.

Someone in a nearby row shushed them, and Rey sulked in her seat, pushing at her empty glass and eyeing the aisle in search of the flight attendant.

“You asked me to choose between you and what I knew was right,” she said after a long moment. “No matter how I felt about you, I couldn’t compromise my morals.” She hesitated, wrapping her hand tightly around her glass. “But don’t you for one second think that it didn’t break every part of me to have to leave you behind.”

“You could have had everything,” Kylo muttered back. “I could have… we could have made it work, you by my side, using our combined influence to build something new, something different… you would have had anything you wanted.”

“Everything except happiness, except a clear conscience. Just like you.” She turned to face him, her fingers trembling as she reached across and slowly, slowly pulled off his sunglasses.

Her breath caught in her throat as his eyes came into view in the dim light of the cabin. They were the same dark-whiskey color she remembered, but the ever-present pain in their depths seemed even deeper, more profound.

She’d almost forgotten how often he looked to be on the verge of tears, but she saw it then, shining bright, and it took everything she had not to lay her hand on his cheek, not to comfort and hold this broken man who had once meant the world to her.

“Hi, Ben,” she whispered.

His hand found hers, just for the space of a heartbeat, fingertips just brushing.

She let him.

 ---

_It’s the fourth day when Ben finds her crying on the beach by moonlight, a makeshift fire roaring before her as she sits just beyond the shoreline._

_He doesn’t say anything, doesn’t make a sound as he sits beside her, waiting._

_“I don’t want to go home,” Rey says after a long moment, scrubbing a hand across her eyes. She laughs humorlessly, turning to face him. “It’s ridiculous, isn’t it? I still have a few days, and I know it’s not… it’s not real here, obviously I have to go back, but…”_

_She digs her toes into the white sand, wrapping her arms around her knees. “It’s lonely in the city,” she says quietly. “I’ve been by myself for so long.”_

_Ben nods. “Me too.”_

_“I was raised in the system,” Rey continues, staring into the fire. “Thrown away by parents I never even met, aged out when I was eighteen. I’ve made friends over the last year or two, but I still don’t… know where I come from. Who I am.”_

_Ben sighs and nods again, and his shoulder lightly brushes hers. “I’m from philanthropic royalty,” he murmurs. “My mother founded The Resistance Network.”_

_Rey stares at him in disbelief, eyes wide. “...you’re Leia Organa’s **son**?” she whispers. _

_“And abject disappointment, yes.” He finds a nearby stick and pokes at the fire, eyes clouded and mouth tight. “I was the family prodigy when I was younger, even when I was struggling through business classes at NYU.”_

_“Did your dad work in nonprofits, too?”_

_Ben’s features darken, and his hand tightens on the stick. “My dad was a bush pilot here on the islands back in the seventies,” he says. “He met my mother on Maui, and it was antagonistic love at first sight. They relocated to New York and set up The Resistance Network. I worked there for a few years out of college.”_

_Rey is quiet, frowning and staring at the fire. “Strange. We might have met there,” she murmurs._

_“I thought the same thing,” Ben says quietly._

_There’s a charged moment between them, the fire crackling and popping, neither looking away from the flames._

_“Why did you leave?” Rey finally hazards._

_Ben grimaces, tossing the stick into the fire. “I was headhunted by First Order when I was 23,” he says. “They gave me an offer I couldn’t refuse. And… I was angry, with my family. I’d spent most of my childhood in boarding schools, with nannies, always someone else’s problem.”_

_“How difficult for you,” Rey notes bitterly, and Ben turns to face her, his features drawn._

_“You’re not the only one who felt thrown away, Rey,” he says quietly._

_Neither of them speak for a long moment._

_“I thought it would be better here,” Rey finally murmurs._

_“Me too,” Ben sighs, leaning back against his hands. “I was sent here as a punishment for failing on a case. Regroup and find my purpose again, they said. But it feels… hollow, somehow.”_

_Rey nods, swallowing hard against a sudden swell of tears. “I thought…” she starts, “I thought would make my way to paradise and be fine on my own. That I’d forge my path by myself and not need anything else. But the whole time I’ve been here… I don’t think I’ve ever felt so alone.”_

_“...you’re not alone.”_

_She glances up at Ben with tears in her eyes._

_“Neither are you,” she whispers._

_She hesitates before laying her hand over his and gently twining their fingers together. Ben starts, then settles, squeezing her hand back._

_When his eyes meet hers over the fire, they hold her whole._

_\---_

“Miss?”

Rey shook her head in an attempt to clear it, staring up at the flight attendant in confusion. “...I’m sorry, what?”

The attendant smiled at her, indicating the pad of paper in her hand. “Would you like to join us for our meal service?” she repeated kindly. “You have your choice between dinner and breakfast.”

Rey bit her lip, glancing to the cloche on Kylo’s tray table. “What did you get?” she asked him _._

“Dinner,” he said flatly.

“Breakfast it is, then,” Rey said to the attendant, ignoring Kylo’s responding eyeroll.

The attendant nodded and retreated to the front of the cabin, returning with a silver tray laden with a cloche-covered plate and real silverware wrapped in a linen napkin.

Rey’s eyes were as wide as the saucer the attendant set down on her tray table. “We get actual _food_ here?” she whispered to Kylo.

Kylo pursed his lips as he removed his cloche, revealing a half chicken, dirty rice, and wild greens. “You’ve flown first class before.”

“Yes, but we didn’t get a _meal_.” Rey tugged off the cloche on her own plate, her heart falling at the sight of a small coffee cake and a tub of yogurt. “...well that’s a disappointment.”

Kylo shrugged, raising a forkful of greens to his lips. “It’s still protein.”

She stared at Kylo’s plate as she dejectedly pushed at her yogurt with the provided spoon.

Kylo stared at her for a long moment, glancing at his plate and sighing before wordlessly pushing it towards her.

Rey’s eyes were bright as she switched trays with him, digging into the provided meal with gusto.

After a few minutes, she noticed Kylo watching her intently and flushed deep crimson, setting her fork down. She was a loud eater, she knew — she’d spent too many years going hungry, too many years trying to find her next meal on the streets to eat delicately — and she felt a few other passengers’ eyes on her, appraising, judging, the same way they often did when Ben had taken her to the fancy Midtown restaurants he favored.

“Sorry,” she muttered, feeling her cheeks heat beneath Kylo’s steady gaze and anticipating another snide remark.

“Are you not eating enough?” he asked, voice laced with what appeared to be genuine concern, and Rey’s eyes widened in surprise.

“No, I…” She frowned, absently spinning the fork beneath her hand. “It’s just… rough sometimes, making ends meet, but we always have food on the table. But when you’re used to…” She trailed off.

Kylo hesitated, then nodded. The words were unspoken between them, but she’d said them often enough, when he’d found her in the middle of their kitchen with her cheeks stuffed full of peach slices, when he’d found little bags of pretzels hidden in strategic locations around their bedroom.

_When you’re used to going hungry, you take every bit of food that’s handed to you._

Kylo shook his head, mouth drawn into a tight, angry line. “You’d be fed with First Order,” he muttered. “Fed, clothed, taken care of. You wouldn’t want for anything.”

Rey sighed and began to saw through her chicken, feeling a slight twinge of guilt as Kylo morosely pulled back the foil on his yogurt. “They must be paying you well,” she attempted in a light voice, “considering how many hours you’re working.”

Kylo raised an eyebrow at her as he dipped his spoon into the yogurt. “And how do you know about my work schedule?”

Rey shrugged. “You’re the CEO of First Order Capital,” she said simply, taking a bite out of the thigh. “It’s to our benefit to know what you’re doing, who you’re destroying.”

“Surveillance, then? An inside man?”

“Something like that. Make you paranoid, does it?”

“I didn’t get to be CEO without being paranoid.” Kylo set his spoon down without taking a bite, staring straight ahead.

Rey narrowed her eyes in irritation, setting her own fork down. “No,” she said tightly, “you got to be CEO by ousting your mentor.”

“Which _you wanted me to do,_ ” Kylo said hotly. “Every day, you told me to leave Snoke, to get out from under his influence. And when I finally did, when I risked everything to climb higher, you left.”

Rey shook her head, fighting back a sudden swell of tears. “If you still don’t understand what you did wrong, Ben Solo,” she said shortly, “if you still don’t understand why I had to leave, then there’s no hope for you after all.”

“Maybe there’s not.” He pushed his tray away, avoiding the flight attendant’s gaze as she came to collect it. “Maybe you were right when you had that look in your eyes back on Takodana, when you called me a monster.”

“Then why did you come?” Rey seethed, stabbing her fork into her chicken. “You must have known there was a chance you’d see me, a chance that I’d still take the trip.”

“ _So did you_.” He ground out the words between clenched teeth, dark eyes flashing fire as he leaned across the console, face very close to hers in the low light of the cabin. “Maybe you’re right,” he said in a tight whisper, and every word _hurt,_ as though it were dragged from the depths of what remained of his soul. “That every day of the last nine months has been agony, that every day I dive deeper into my work and pretend I don’t see your face the minute I set foot in that apartment and wonder what it would have been like if you’d stayed, if I’d given you enough of a reason to.”

Rey’s eyes widened, but she stayed silent, still gripping her fork.

“And maybe…” Kylo seemed to deflate, leaning back in his seat and closing his eyes. “Maybe I wanted to go back to the place where I first saw you, to just pretend that things could have been different.”

Rey swallowed hard, pushing her own tray back and staring at her hands.

“I wanted that, too,” she said after a long moment, turning her hands over and avoiding his slow, steady gaze. “I wanted…”

_I wanted to be with you._

“I wanted to see it,” she whispered. “Takodana. One more time.”

Kylo nodded tightly, and he hesitated before reaching over to take Rey’s hand in his. “One day,” he said quietly. “Just…” He squeezed her hand. “One day in Takodana. One day where there’s no Resistance, no First Order, just… you and me. What could have been.”

Rey stared down at their clasped hands, willing her breathing to settle even as her heart seemed to be pounding out of her chest.

“Okay,” she whispered.

\---

_Something changes between them after that night on the beach. Just a little change, but solid and substantial just the same._

_It’s little things, signs of a growing closeness that she’s afraid to name._

_They borrow Maz’s ancient Buick and drive across the island to the Sleeping Giant mountain trail, and Ben keeps a steadying hand at the small of her back at the slightest inclines, lets Rey clasp his hand as they haul each other up the steep slope to the summit. It’s breathtaking, a 360-degree view of the island’s eastern shore, wide swaths of green farmland sheared through with rocky mountains, the ocean rolling in at a distance._

_They picnic together in the shade of a hala tree, Maz having sent them off with two heaping plate lunches of rice, ahi poke, lomi lomi salmon, and haupia, a thick concoction of coconut milk and arrowroot starch wrapped in banana leaves._

_It’s the most delicious thing Rey has ever eaten, and she smacks her lips and sucks food off her fingers as she breathes in the scent of coconut and wildflowers._

_Ben watches her curiously, wiping his own hands off with a checkered napkin. “Hungry, were you?” he deadpans._

_Rey winces, setting aside her platter. “Sorry,” she says sheepishly. “I…”_

_She hesitates. “I was homeless for awhile,” she says in a rush, ignoring the sudden look of surprise on Ben’s features. “And hungry. I get kind of excited by food.” She hefts the haupia in her hand with a weak smile. “Especially desserts. Does Maz make this?”_

_Ben nods, still staring at her. “There’s a farmer’s market about half a mile outside of the village, everything fresh more or less daily. I think she’s got haggling with every vendor there down to a science. You can find pre-made haupia pretty much everywhere, but Maz has made it from scratch for as long as I can remember.”_

_He’s quiet for a long moment. “Was it us?” he asks finally, not quite looking at her._

_Rey raises an eyebrow as she takes another bite of haupia. “Us?”_

_“First Order, I mean. That made you...”_

_“Ah.” Rey nods in understanding. “No. Just the bad luck of aging out of the system. Once you turn eighteen, you’re on your own. You wouldn’t believe just how many homeless are barely out of their teens.”_

_Ben frowns, staring down at his plate lunch and poking at his poke. “I remember Resistance having initiatives for that sort of thing.”_

_“When we can get the funding, the office space, and the buy-in, yes.” She folds up the banana leaf in her hand. “We do good work, Ben. We could use you.”_

_“I don’t think there’s a way back for me,” he murmurs. “Not there. Not now.”_

_“Mm… we’ll see.” Rey flashes him a smile as they pack up the remnants of their lunch. “I can be very convincing.”_

_She takes Ben’s extended hand and holds on for just a fraction too long as she pulls herself to her feet._

_“I’m getting that,” he says quietly, and her heart pounds in her chest as he strokes his thumb over the corner of her mouth. “Got a little something here.”_

_“...thanks,” she says, and mentally kicks herself for how breathless her voice sounds._

_The descent down Sleeping Giant is easier than the ascent, and they drive back to Takodana with the windows down and the radio cranked up, Ben sighing and tolerating Rey’s enthusiastic Adele singalong with a scarcely-concealed smile._

_“I think you’re good inside after all, Ben Solo,” she says with a grin, her unbound hair blowing around her face._

_Ben’s eyes are hidden behind his sunglasses, but there’s a faint grin tugging at the corners of his lips._

_\---_

_E_ _ _ _ T _ _ _.

Rey sighed and tapped her pen against her lips as she scanned the cross clues, still at a loss.

She raised an eyebrow at her seatmate, who was dozing fitfully with his arms crossed over his chest and his head bowed. There was gooseflesh prickling along his arms in the cool air of the cabin, and Rey hesitated, glancing down at the blanket that had been on her seat when she’d first boarded.

Sighing, she unfurled the blanket and draped it over him, smiling faintly as he snuffled in his sleep and snuggled into it, half-turning away from her before settling back into sleep.

Kylo had awkwardly pulled his hand away from hers when the flight attendant had come by to take Rey’s tray, coughing and replacing his AirPods, the dim lighting just barely covering the faint blush spreading across his cheeks.

She’d have crowed if not for the identical flush staining her own.

It was almost laughable, in a way — they’d lived together for nearly three months, had truly astounding amounts of sex in that time, and had shared a bone-deep intimacy whose absence left Rey feeling bereft and hollow no matter how many ill-advised Tinder dates she went on since they’d separated. And here they were, blushing and touching hands like a pair of love-starved teenagers.

Rey smiled faintly at the thought. It was... accurate, in a strange way — they’d been almost virginal when they’d met, at least in an emotional sense, two desperately lonely people, two sides of the same coin that fate had seen fit to set in the same place at the same time.

Only to ultimately rip them apart.

She sighed, counting boxes for 47 down and biting hard at her lip. It was easy, too easy to remember those stolen moments with Ben Solo, the moments where she’d seen deep into his heart and knew him for the good man he was, the good man he could be.

Now, once again slotted together by fate, coincidence, happenstance…

She’d be lying if she said her heart didn’t still skip a beat when he touched her.

If she didn’t still yearn for hope, for a sign that maybe, just maybe he could still turn back.

One day.

One chance.

Rey took a deep breath and reached over to gently brush a stray lock of hair away from Kylo’s face before turning back to her puzzle.

Ten letters.

_Second chance._

She hesitated, her pen hovering over the page before she filled in the boxes with deft, quick strokes.

 _Redemption,_ she thought.

It fit.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The conclusion! I hope you all enjoy. :)
> 
> (One quick note: I know that flight attendants no longer give passengers leis at the airport; consider this one a bit of artistic license just for the fun of it.)

_“So you came to Hawaii and you can’t swim?”_  

_They’re sitting side-by-side in the tiny square that serves as Takodana’s town center, digging into the cups of flavored shaved ice that Ben had sworn up and down was authentic island fare._

_Rey shrugs, shoveling in another mouthful of ice in the heated midday sun. “I never really had a chance to learn. None of the foster homes I grew up in had a pool.”_

_“But you never went to Long Island, the Jersey shore?”_

_“Jersey, yeah, plenty of times. But I always just waded and tanned on the beach.”_

_Ben frowns, staring out to the curling blue ribbon at the horizon that marks the shoreline. “I can teach you,” he offers._

_Rey raises a dubious eyebrow as she stabs at her shaved ice. “So, what, you’re a swim coach now?”_  

_“Not really, but I bet we could at least get you to float.” He tugs at her hand, and she feels that increasingly-familiar flutter in her chest at the feel of his skin against hers. “Come on.”_

_They finish their ice as they walk back to the beach, discarding the cups at the bungalow and stripping down to their swimsuits before making their way to the water’s edge._

_“I’m not sure about this,” Rey hesitates as they wade into the clear blue water. There are colorful fish swimming at her ankles, shells cracking beneath her feet, and Rey trembles as Ben pulls her out to deeper water, up to her waist._

_“It’s okay, I’ve got you,” he murmurs, hesitating before placing his hands gingerly on her hips and turning her so her back is to his front. “Now, lean back.”_

_Rey awkwardly leans into the start of a backbend, and Ben sighs behind her. “No, lift your feet up.”_

_“...like a flamingo?”_

_“ **Both** feet, Rey.” _

_“You want me to fall back and drown?”_

_“No,” Ben says patiently. She feels one hand settle at the small of her back, the other cupping the back of her head. “Just lean back into the water. I’ve got you.”_

_Rey hesitates, gingerly lifting one foot out of the sand and clutching at the hand at her back. “Good girl,” she hears Ben murmur. “Now, spread your arms out. Just like that, good. Now… the other foot.”_

_She’s shaking as Ben gently cards his fingers through her hair and murmurs words of encouragement, and she’s not sure it’s entirely from fear._

_She takes a deep breath and lifts her other foot up, and panic seizes her, her arms starting to thrash._

_But then Ben’s hands are there at the back of her neck, supporting and gentle. “Easy now. Easy. Relax, spread out your arms and legs and just let the water carry you.”_

_Rey tries to take steadying breaths through her nose and spreads out her shaky limbs, slowly calming as she breathes, as the water begins to rock her gently, as Ben continues to hold her._

_“Good. Very good. What do you see?”_

_The sky, sapphire-blue above her, with the arc of a rainbow at a distance as rain and mist encircle the mountains._

_“What do you hear?”_

_Waves, the high call of seabirds, the wind rustling through green palms._

_“What do you feel?”_

_Warm water, the sun across her cheeks, gentle, steadying hands supporting her…_

_And something else, something warm and beautiful blossoming in her chest as she floats, as Ben massages small circles into her neck, as she closes her eyes and **feels** , down to her bones, deep in her heart. _

_Rey settles her feet back into the sand, standing on unsteady legs and turning back to face him as the waves rock gently around them._

_“Not that hard, was it,” Ben says, and Rey stares curiously at the faint tremor through his shoulders._

_“Ben?” she asks, furrowing her brow in concern as she lays a hand against his bare shoulder._

_Ben takes her hand before leaning down to rest his forehead against hers, and Rey gasps._

_“Still afraid?” he whispers, placing one hand at the small of her back and pressing closer._

_“Yes,” she whispers back, tilting her head up just a fraction._

_“Of me?”_

_Rey laughs, twining their fingers together, and she’s delirious, here in the warm salt air, the beaming Hawaiian sun, white sand beneath her feet and this beautiful man who has somehow burrowed his way deep into her heart._

_“No,” she says earnestly._

_She moves her free hand to tangle in his hair and bring his mouth down to hers in a soft, warm kiss._

_Her feet may be firmly on the ground, but she could swear she’s floating._

_\---_

Rey woke slowly, groaning and stretching as she rolled out the kinks in her neck. Even in first class, the seats didn’t recline enough for a comfortable rest, even for a relatively small woman like herself.

Her eyes widened as she began to sit up only to find her limbs tangled in the soft blue blanket that had been draped over her sleeping frame. Her eyes struggled to adjust to the dim cabin light as she glanced to the seat beside her, but it was empty, the seatbelt undone and neatly folded on the seat.

“Excuse me,” Rey asked as the cabin attendant came by, “how much time do we have left?”

“About four more hours,” the attendant said quietly, glancing to the sleeping passengers around her. “We’ve decided not to make an announcement over the PA with everyone sleeping, but we’ve managed to get the WiFi up and running if you’d like to use a computer or your phone in airplane mode.”

“It’s working again?”

Rey froze as Kylo appeared beside her seat, his dark eyes leveled at the flight attendant.

“Yes, sir — we do apologize for any inconvenience. I know that you’re one of our Platinum Alliance members, and I’ll see to it that you’re compensated for any interruption in your business.”

Kylo thanked her quietly as Rey stood on shaky legs and allowed him back into his seat, and her pulse pounded in her ears as the quiet ‘click’ of his seatbelt seemed to echo around her.

 _Stupid_ , she thought, frowning and snuggling into the blanket (had Kylo draped it over her, the same way she had for him? She didn’t even want to think about the possibility).

With the WiFi back up and running, he would doubtless return to his business with First Order — destroying this community, skimming funds from that initiative. It was as if a gulf had re-opened between them, impassable and yawning, their tenuous peace on a knife’s edge that would be broken the minute Kylo retrieved his laptop.

But Kylo didn’t move. Instead, he fisted his hands against the knees of his dark dress slacks, knuckles white, staring at the computer bag at his feet for long, agonizing minutes.

“It’s late in New York,” he finally murmured.

“Late everywhere, I think,” Rey said, glancing past him to the darkened window.

Kylo nodded. “How’d the crossword puzzle go?”

“Finished it while you were sleeping earlier. I hit a rhythm.”

“How about the sudoku?”

“Still a mess.”

“Want to take a look at it together?”

Rey stared at him, half-hidden beneath her blanket, her eyes wide. “Don’t you have work to do?” she asked, mentally kicking herself even as the words fell from her lips.

Kylo shrugged, reaching over to slip the in-flight magazine from her seat pocket and flipping to the back. “First Order can last without me for one day, I think,” he murmured, not quite looking at her even as he laid the magazine down on the console between them. “Three sevens in one box?”

“I _told_ you.” Rey bit back the sob of giddy relief that rose up in her chest, nonchalantly uncapping her pen. “Anyway, you’re one to talk. You’re awful at sudoku.”

Kylo looked at her, the faintest hint of a smile at the corners of his lips, and Rey felt her heart clench painfully in her chest at the sight of it. “That’s why I’ve got you,” he said, taking her offered pen, his fingertips lingering against hers for just a fraction of a second.

Rey gave him a weak smile in return, nodding and moving closer to him across the console as they rested their heads together and looked down at the puzzle.

“Yeah,” she said quietly. “You got me.”

\---

_The last three days on Kauai are a whirlwind._

_During the day, Ben whisks her around the island, taking her to the lush green_ _Na 'Aina Kai_ _botanical gardens, the sloping mountain cliffs of the Napali Coast, the rolling waves of Hanalei Bay._

_At night, they share stolen kisses by moonlight, cook with local produce in the tiny kitchenette of the bungalow (Ben is a surprisingly deft hand in the kitchen, and if Rey weren’t already falling for him, that would likely have done it), and make rapturous, passionate love in the narrow brass bed._

_After, Ben brushes her sweaty hair from her forehead and kisses her, whispers words of adoration, holds her close._

_On the last night, they rest their heads together as Ben calls the airline and re-books his flight home._

_Lihue to Honolulu to New York, side-by-side with her to the last._

_“We should have coffee once we’re home,” Ben says, kissing her knuckles. “Get to know each other.”_

_Rey laughs, trailing her toes up his bare calf. “I think we’ve gotten to **know** each other well enough.”_

_“You know what I mean,” Ben rolls his eyes fondly, pressing a quick kiss to her temple. “I don’t want this to just be some island fling that fades out once we’re back on the mainland.”_

_Rey nods, snuggling in against his chest. “I think…” She hesitates. “That night, on the beach… when we held hands… I felt something. I knew.”_

_Ben strokes the bare skin of her shoulder, nodding. “I felt it too.”_

_The promise of a future, growing warm and bright between them here in the calm cradle of the island._

_A chance at a different path, a way home for the wayward son who had turned away from his family’s path._

_And a belonging, a place where neither of them would have to be alone again._

_\---_

“Last column.”

“All it needs is a two. Finish it off.”

Kylo nodded, filling in the box. “We made a pretty good team,” he observed, setting down the pen and handing the magazine back to Rey. “Always did. Remember those beetles back on the island?”

Rey grimaced as she closed the magazine and placed it back in her seat pocket. “Don’t remind me. I still have a scar from those little bastards.”

Kylo raised an eyebrow at her, glancing to her right shoulder where it lay hidden beneath the sleeve of her thin T-shirt. “Still?” he asked, beginning to reach out before drawing his hand back. “I would have thought that would have faded by now.”

Rey hesitated before rolling up her sleeve, showing him the faded scar marring the pale flesh just below the curve of her shoulder. “The one that got me had some bite in him,” she said with a weak grin.

Her eyes widened as Kylo hesitantly reached out, just barely skimming the surface of the scar with his fingertips. “Does it still hurt?” he asked.

Rey pursed her lips, cupping her hand around her upper arm and hiding the scar from his sight. “Not as much as the rest of it,” she said quietly.

Before she could second-guess herself, she leaned over and rested her head against Kylo’s shoulder with a sigh, closing her eyes and drawing his arm around her. He hesitated for just a moment before holding her close, absently rubbing over her scar with his thumb.

“I’m sorry,” he murmured.

Rey nodded, swallowing hard against the lump in her throat as she pressed closer to him.

“I know.”

\---

_They go for coffee once they’re back in New York. It’s a rainy September afternoon, but they only have eyes for each other, even in the crowded Manhattan shop._

_It only takes three weeks before he asks her, when they’re lying entwined in the oversized bed of his well-appointed condo, as he presses soft, warm kisses to the nape of her neck._

_“Move in with me,” he murmurs, smoothing his thumb over the notches of her spine. “You already have a drawer, you’re here every night. You might as well be on the lease.”_

_Rey hesitates even as she luxuriates in his arms. “So Finn was right,” she says. “He thought you might ask.”_

_“Finn’s worried about losing your third of the rent.”_

_“Finn is my best friend and is worried about me moving in with a VP at First Order Capital,” Rey sighs, turning onto her side and propping herself up on one elbow. “He’ll come around. Eventually.”_

_“He hates me,” Ben remarks._

_“And you hate him. It’s a great match.” She smiles and leans down to kiss him._

_Finn and Rose had gawked at her when she’d come home from Hawaii, tanned and flushed and newly in love with the enemy. It had taken three weeks of cajoling, pleading, and finally outright defiance before they’d begun to accept that she and Ben were together, that she cared for him, and that he was a part of her life now._

_“He’s First Order, Rey,” Finn had said with a deep line of concern creasing his brow. “When I worked there, you knew, you just **knew** that you did not want to cross paths with Kylo Ren. That guy is unhinged.” _

_“He’s fighting from the inside,” Rey had insisted as she sat with Finn and Rose at their kitchen table. “He hates Snoke’s operations and the direction of the company as much as any of us; just last night he was talking about how much he wants to find a way out. Deep down he’s one of the good guys. You’ll see.”_

_“You don’t have to make a decision now,” she distantly hears Ben saying as he reaches up to tuck a stray lock of hair behind her ear. “Just… know that it’s here for you if you…”_

_“Right side of the bed is still mine,” Rey says, grinning down at him. “And I want at least half of your closet.”_

_“...front entryway closet.”_

_“No, the walk-in. The **big** walk-in. Your wardrobe is fucking ridiculous. No one needs that many ties.” _

_“Coordination is very important, Rey.” There’s a glint in his eye as he flips her onto her back, his hands entwined with hers, and his lips are soft as he kisses her._

_There’s a soft autumn rain pattering outside, and as they move together, whisper soft declarations of love, for the first time, everything seems right._

_\---_

Crimson-gold light spilled into the cabin as Rey stared groggily out the window, her head still resting against Kylo’s shoulder.

“Two more hours,” he murmured.

“I wonder what time it is in New York.”

“You’re going to get jet-lagged if you do that.” He held up his left wrist, glancing at his watch, the obnoxiously expensive Breitling piece she knew he kept for special occasions. “Five-thirty in Honolulu.”

“Mm.” Rey stretched but stayed in his embrace. “Pretty sunrise.”

“That happens a lot out here.”

“I remember.” She’d spent every morning in Kauai on the front steps of the bungalow, local coffee in hand as she watched the sky turn purple-golden in the early morning light. It was the sunsets that took her breath away, as the sun dipped low over the horizon in a wash of oranges and pinks, but sunrises on the islands were soft, quiet, serene, all hazy filtered light, the slow sway of palms in a cool ocean breeze.

“Do you want to watch something?” Kylo asked, reaching out with his free hand to tap at the screen in front of them. “Looks like they have _Parks and Recreation._ You always liked that one.”

“You remember that?”

Kylo frowned, selecting a random episode before sitting back and rubbing gently at her shoulder. “You left,” he said. “Doesn’t mean I forgot you.”

“For the hundredth time,” Rey insisted, sighing even as she leaned into his touch, “I didn’t want to leave. I didn’t have a choice.”

“Do you ever think about it?” he asked, staring straight ahead at the screen as the opening credits began to play. “That night?”

Rey closed her eyes and swallowed hard, digging her fingertips into the console between them.

“Every day.”

\---

_It’s the middle of a cold November night when he calls her from work._

_“It’s done. Over.” Ben sounds out of breath, and she can hear the rush of the city behind him on his end of the call._

_Rey sits up in their bed, her eyes wide as she clutches her phone. “You…”_

_“Snoke is gone. He’ll get a nice golden parachute out of the deal, and I had a hell of a fight with the board, but he’s officially ousted as CEO of First Order Capital.” She hears him hailing a cab even as she presses her free hand to her mouth and fights back a sudden swell of tears. “I’ll be home in twenty minutes to celebrate. I love you.”_

_“Love you too.” She ends the call, head spinning, as she quickly texts Finn the news._

**_He did it. Snoke is gone. I told you he was one of us. xoxo_ **

_Rey races around the apartment and tries to get herself ready, quickly hopping into the bathroom to shower and shave her legs (and everything else)._

_She hesitates in their shared closet for only a minute before picking out the champagne-colored negligee, the one with lace and silk that ends at mid-thigh and drives him wild._

_She’s brushing her hair into glossy waves when she hears the front door open, and she sits up at her vanity, trembling as she turns to greet him, biting her lip shyly._

_Ben looks more than a bit disheveled, his tie undone, suit jacket balled up in his fists, but he’s beautiful, so beautiful, and before she knows it she’s launched herself across the room and into his arms, peppering kisses across his neck and collarbones._

_Ben laughs and leans down to kiss her even as he hoists her up into his arms. “Sorry I’m late,” he murmurs. “It took awhile to sign the paperwork and get everything set up. We may need tighter security for a few weeks — Snoke was blindsided, and he can be dangerous when he’s angry — but everything should be okay.”_

_Rey nods and nestles in against his chest, her heart pounding. “So how is this happening?” she asks, toying with the buttons on his dress shirt. “Are you dissolving First Order, donating its assets? Or are you just coming over to work at Resistance?”_

_Ben stills beneath her touch, the hand toying at the lace over her hip going slack. “What?”_

_“Well, what are the next steps? There’s still time to salvage our winter initiatives without First Order looming over us.” Rey tilts her head as she stares up at him, her eyes bright._

_She starts as Ben slowly sets her down to the ground, resting his hands on her hips. “...Rey,” he says in a low voice, “I don’t think you understand._

_“I’m the new CEO of First Order Capital.”_

_The words take a moment to register, but when they do, she feels her blood turn to ice and pulls away from his embrace with eyes wide, jaw slack._

_“You’re **what**?” she breathes in horror. _

_“The board agreed unanimously once I presented my case and pushed Snoke out,” he continues, his eyes dark, pupils blown wide. “Rey…” He extends a hand, reaching for her even as she recoils. “I want you to join me there. Leave Resistance behind and help me create something new, just the two of us.”_

_Rey shakes her head, feeling tears burn at the corners of her eyes as she clutches one hand to her chest. “Don’t do this, Ben,” she manages, her voice breaking on the words. “Please… please don’t...”_

_Ben narrows his eyes, extended hand clenching into a fist. “Why are you still holding on to what little they give you?” he asks in a tight voice. “I made sure you were part of my deal with First Order. You’ll have more money than you’ll know what to do with, you’ll never want for anything!”_

_“How can you…” She’s crying, and she feels stupid, so **stupid** that she had hoped… that she had dreamed…_

_Ben swears, running a hand through his hair. “Do you want to stay with them?” he seethes. “You want to go hungry and scrape by with your pie-in-the-sky delusions of helping people? You can’t even help yourself.”_

_“Stop,” she pleads on a broken sob, moving back away from him. “Ben…”_

_“Do you think they value you? Do you think you mean something to them, a homeless girl from the system? Your parents threw you away. Even the system threw you away in the end. You’re **nothing**.” _

_Rey’s hands go slack at her side, and in that moment, she is numb, she is hollow, she is uninhabited flesh gone inert and empty._

_She is…_

_“But not to me. Not to me, Rey.” He’s suddenly beseeching, eyes pleading as he reaches for her, not touching, just reaching, and she doesn’t understand why he’s crying, too. “Stay with me.”_

_“...please,” he whispers._

_She stares at his outstretched hand with eyes gone hot and gritty._

_His heart looks like it’s breaking._

_She’s sure that hers is._

_\---_

The cabin woke slowly around them, other passengers stretching and talking to each other in low tones as the morning light turned brighter and the sun rose higher over the Pacific Ocean stretching out beneath them.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” the lead flight attendant said in her soft, bright voice, “we’re beginning our initial descent into Honolulu. We expect to have you on the ground within the next forty-five minutes. If you’re seated, please keep your seatbelts fastened. Thank you for flying with us, and aloha.”

Kylo and Rey still sat together, Rey’s head on his shoulder, Rey’s earbuds lying between them as they absently watched the screen in front of them.

“I didn’t mean it,” Kylo murmured. He turned Rey’s hand over in his, his thumb playing across her knuckles. “That night. When I said…”

“I know,” Rey said. “It’s taken me a long time to forgive you. For a long time I wasn’t even sure if I could, if I even wanted to. It was a low blow.”

He nodded. “I could see you pulling away, holding onto your past.”

“You’re still running from yours,” Rey interjected, sulking as Kylo shot her a look.

“And I… I was desperate, desperate to keep you, to make you see things my way, to get you to stay,” he continued. “I thought…”

“That if you emotionally bludgeoned me, that I’d realize you were right?” Rey pulled back just a fraction, staring at him with her jaw set and eyes dry. “That if you broke my heart beyond repair, maybe you could build it back up into what you wanted?”

Kylo’s gaze settled somewhere at a point beyond her shoulder, eyes soft and sad, and she could almost pity the dejected, hang-dog expression on his face. “I was so afraid you’d leave,” he said softly. “I was afraid, in that moment, that I’d lost you.”

Rey bit the inside of her cheek, nodding as she pulled fully away from him, settling back in her seat.

“You did.”

\---

_Rey changes into sweatpants and an old T-shirt, and Ben sleeps on the couch, somewhere between angry and abashed._

_Rey sleeps alone in their bed, crying herself into a restless sleep, clenching and unclenching her fists against the pillow and trying to convince herself that she doesn’t have to do what she knows she does._

_Ben is apologetic in the morning, tries to make her breakfast in bed, but she locks the bedroom door, won’t let him in._

_“I made your favorite, extra-crispy bacon,” Ben offers, and she can almost picture those liquid-dark eyes, the puppy-dog frown as he sighs. “It’s getting late. I have to go to work. I’ll leave it here in the kitchen for you. Try to eat something before it gets cold, okay?”_

_Rey stands at the door, one hand hovering over the doorknob, and everything in her wants to turn it, open the door and fling herself into his arms, find a way out of this, a way where they can still be together._

_She doesn’t._

_“I love you,” Ben murmurs from the other side, and then he’s gone._

_Rey waits five, ten, twenty minutes after she hears the front door close, and then she’s walking out of the bedroom on heavy legs, her hair disheveled around her shoulders, eyes puffy and red._

_She stares around the living room, at the tiny, precious life they’ve built together in just a few short months, the walls covered with pictures of the two of them side-by-side, happy and in love._

_She could almost hate him then, on some level does, for forcing her to destroy it._

_Rey leaves the cooling breakfast in the kitchen untouched, her heart turning over at the fresh hibiscus flowers set in a vase on the table, and she remembers how just the week before they’d booked their return trip to Kauai, one year later, just like they’d promised._

_Gone now, just like the rest of it._

_She can’t find her suitcase, so she settles for a black trash bag, the same way she used to haul her meager belongings in between foster homes, forever a nothing girl, from nowhere._

**_You’re nothing._ **

_Her vision swims as she blindly stuffs a few days worth of clothes in the bag, some toiletries, only the truest of necessities. She leaves behind the treasured keepsakes of their time together, the extravagant gifts he’d bought her, anything that has tied her to the man she knows she’ll have to forget._

_Rey bumps the mahogany end table by the couch with her hip and winces as the eight-by-ten picture frame on it tumbles to the ground with a crash, shards of broken glass flying in all directions. Her legs are shaking as she kneels down and recognizes the last picture she and Ben had taken together in Kauai, their last golden sunset, the two of them framed by swaying palms and hala trees. Rey’s head is rested against Ben’s shoulder, her arm extended out as she’d snapped the selfie of the two of them, and Ben’s smile is soft, content, happier in that moment than she’d ever seen him._

_Without thinking, Rey roughly folds it up and shoves it into her pocket, one last memento of a kinder time._

_She walks around the apartment in a daze, circling the living room, the bedroom, the bathroom as the day wears on and she knows, deep down, that time has run out._

_Especially when she examines the pictures over the fireplace mantle and finds it, hidden away with the boarding passes for their trip the following year, with the dried flowers from the lei she’d received when she’d first landed in Lihue, with the mother-of-pearl shell she’d found on the beach and given to him, shy yet bold with a burgeoning love._

_A small black velvet box._

_Rey doesn’t open it, doesn’t want to see what she knows lays inside it, and sets it back behind the picture frames without a word._

_There’s nothing left to think. Nothing left to say._

_It’s late afternoon, cold November rain beating down against the railing of the outside balcony, when Rey stands in the doorway with her things, takes one last long, lingering look at the apartment, the pictures of herself and Ben, the bittersweet memories of a lost life, a lost love._

_She leaves her key under the mat, and then she’s gone._

_\---_

“Ladies and gentlemen, as we begin our final approach to Honolulu, please stow any large electronics and any items you may have retrieved from the overhead bins.”

Rey blinked sleepily as Ben reached across and shut off the seat screen. “There it is,” he motioned to the window as green, rolling mountains and crystal-blue water tilted into view. “Did you spend any time on Oahu last year?”

Rey shook her head. “I spent about half a day checking out Waikiki before I had to catch my flight to Lihue. It seemed a lot more… touristy.”

“It is. Nothing against it or the big island, but my heart’s always on Kauai.”

“What you still have of one.” It came out more bitter than she intended, but Kylo just stared at her, something inscrutable in his eyes. “Sorry,” she murmured. “Just… remembering that last night. How much it hurt.”

“Imagine it from my end,” Kylo said quietly. “I didn’t want to believe it at first, when I came home and you were gone. I figured it couldn’t be true, that you were coming back, but then I saw…”  

Rey raised an eyebrow at him.

“You left the breakfast I’d made you,” he said, staring out the window. “You left the bed unmade. Then I found the broken picture frame, found your key. And I knew.”

“You made your choice,” Rey said, looking past him to the rocky islands, the white curve of shoreline slowly coming into view. "We've both of us had to live with it."

“I did.” He closed his eyes. “And there hasn’t been a single day that I haven’t regretted it.”

Rey’s eyes were soft and sad as she leaned back in her seat.

“Me too."

\---

Daniel K. Inouye International Airport was every bit as busy as she remembered it, filled with bustling tourists in bright, tropical sportswear.

Rey suppressed a giggle as the smiling flight attendant reached up on tiptoe to place a bright-pink lei around Kylo’s neck. “You look like Hades on a holiday,” she remarked, motioning to his dark slacks and black dress shirt.

“Yeah, yeah,” Kylo grumbled, stripping off the lei, winding it around his hands once and depositing it on her head like a makeshift flower crown. “Let’s get our bags and find where our connection is.”

“Are we on the same flight again?” Rey asked as they walked side-by-side to the baggage claim area.

Kylo shrugged. “I assume so. We booked this thing together, after all. Hawaiian 421 to Lihue, leaves around noon?”

“That’s it.” Rey grimaced as she glanced out the windows and a small turboprop set down on a distant runway. “I hope we’re in a twin-engine this time. That rickety little thing last year scared the hell out of me.”

“The newer planes they have running between the islands are a lot sturdier,” Kylo remarked as they stepped onto the escalator. “Probably a B717. Nothing like the single-engine Cessna my…” His features darkened, and his hand tightened on the strap to his computer bag.

“Your father loved you,” Rey said, gently touching his wrist.

“You don’t know that,” Kylo said, his features clouded.

“I’ve talked to your mother, you know.” Rey hefted her own carry-on as they stepped off the escalator and walked towards the baggage carousel. “She’d give anything for you to come home.”

Kylo was quiet for a long moment, not looking at her as he plucked a sleek, dark suitcase off the belt. “I need to make a call,” he said gruffly, setting the suitcase down at his feet. “I’ll meet you at the gate before take-off.”

Rey frowned as she searched the belt for her own suitcase. “You’re aware that the time now counts as the start of your one day allowance, right?”

Kylo hesitated, phone in hand, and nodded. “This is something I have to do. I promise, I’ll…”

Before Rey realized it, he had bent down and kissed her on the cheek, and his own were crimson as he pulled back. “Wait for me.”

Rey stared up at him with wide eyes, grazing her fingers over her cheek before reaching up to untangle the lei from her hair.

Kylo sighed and bent down so she could drape it across his neck with a hint of a smile.

“Twelve twenty-seven,” Rey said. “Sharp. I left you behind once, and I’ll do it again.”

“I’m well aware of that,” Kylo responded before dialing a number into his phone and walking off, his shoulders hunched, back bowed.

Rey watched him go with a pang in her chest, and she scrambled to retrieve her suitcase as it moved past her on the belt.

She had a few calls of her own to make.

\---

“Don’t move. Don’t talk to anyone. We can be there in… Rose, how long does it take to get to Hawaii?”

Rey rolled her eyes as she sipped at her soda, staring out at the green mountains and watching the planes taking off from the floor-to-ceiling windows at the small commuter gate. “Finn. By the time you managed to figure out an itinerary and get here, I’d already be on my way home.”

“Are you being held hostage? Blink twice for yes. ...wait. Okay, hang up, FaceTime me, _then_ blink.”

“ _Finn.”_ She sighed, cradling her phone in between her cheek and shoulder. “He’s not going to do anything. He’s…”

Rey glanced over to her shoulder to where Kylo remained rooted to a standing charging station, just as he had for the last hour and a half, features alternately pale and livid as he spoke in hushed tones into his phone and tapped furiously at his laptop.

“He’s busy,” she said flatly. “With _business_.”

“I’ll bet. There have been some rumblings out of their boardroom. Something big’s happening, Rey. I don’t want you anywhere near it, or him, when it does.” 

“I can handle myself.”

“It’s not you I’m worried about,” Finn said, then paused. “Well… yes, it is. But you know what I mean.”

“I’m giving him one day for old times’ sake,” Rey sighed, catching Kylo’s eye over her shoulder. “Less if we get to the bungalow and he turns into a jackass or tries to get handsy. But so far he’s been surprisingly well-behaved. He even apologized for… well. Everything.”

“...how long was your flight again?”

“About twelve and a half hours.”

“No way did he apologize for everything he owes you in that amount of time.”

“No,” Rey agreed, setting aside her soda. “He didn’t. He couldn’t. And... he’s still firmly committed to the bad guys.” She paused.

“But with all of that, do you still…” Finn trailed off.

Rey bit the inside of her cheek as she glanced back to Kylo once more, and he looked almost comical, pink lei a vivid contrast to his dark clothing, his face pale as he hunched over and spoke into his phone.

“I can’t,” she said. “And I shouldn’t.”

“But you still.”

She sighed, then nodded, picking at a stray thread on the hem of her shorts.

“Yeah,” she murmured. “I think I might still.”

\---

It was fifteen minutes to boarding when Kylo re-appeared at her side, his features pale and drawn as he sat heavily in the seat next to her.

“Rough day?” Rey observed, not looking up from the game on her phone.

Kylo said nothing, just stared ahead to the mountains with dark, haunted eyes.

Rey furrowed her brow and touched his knee, pulling her hand back as he jolted. “Ben?”

He shook his head, crossing his arms over his chest and slumping down in his seat. “It’s nothing,” he murmured. “Nothing.”

Rey raised a curious eyebrow at him but didn’t press the issue. “You know,” she said after a moment, “it’s kind of crazy when you think about it. Both of us being here.”

“We did buy the tickets together.”

“No, I mean…” Rey worried her lip between her teeth, glancing at the gate attendants as they milled around at the podium. “We’re on opposite sides now, for all intents and purposes… but we both still somehow broke away enough to come back here, to the place where…”

She watched Kylo’s Adam’s apple bob as he swallowed before turning to face her, and his eyes were soft, dark.

“I missed you, Rey,” he said.

She reached out and smoothed a stray lock of hair away from his forehead. “I missed you too, Ben,” she said softly.

\---

They held hands as they boarded the small aircraft to the Kauai airport of Lihue, and Rey’s heart warmed in her chest, remembering how they’d held hands the last time as they’d flown from Lihue to Honolulu, giddy and newly in love, their whole life stretching out before them.

It was markedly more sedate now, Kylo’s hand familiar in hers, a light, steady grip as they boarded on the tarmac, his sunglasses once more in place, Rey’s scar hidden by the sleeve of her shirt.

“Did you call the airline and change your flight back?” Rey asked as they took their seats together in the second of two first-class rows.

Kylo shook his head. “I was tied up with…” He gave her a strange, sidelong look before reaching down to fasten his seatbelt. “Nothing. I’ll call once we’re settled in on Kauai. I should be able to catch the red-eye back to Honolulu and figure out a flight to New York once I’m there.”

Rey gave him a weak smile. “Or you could always sleep on the beach again.”

“Don’t tempt me, that hammock is a lot more comfortable than it looks.”

“I’m surprised you could even fit into it. You’re a giant.” She finished fastening her own seatbelt and half-watched the flight attendant’s safety presentation. “I guess I could…” She hesitated, staring down at her hands as she felt Ben’s curious gaze on her. “I promised you one day,” Rey continued in a rush. “And since we’re not getting to Takodana until late this afternoon, I guess the clock could start… once we’re there. Not from when we left New York.”

Kylo stared at her, and she steadfastly avoided his gaze as the flight attendant came by to inspect their seatbelts.

“You don’t have to if you don’t want to,” Rey continued, and she winced as she heard the tell-tale beginning of a nervous ramble in her voice. “I know you’re probably busy, with everything, but if you wanted to…”

She started as his hand folded over hers, and his gaze was steady as he removed his sunglasses and set them on the small tray table between them.

“I want to,” he said, voice that familiar deep, dark rumble that raised gooseflesh on her arms and made her heart turn over.

Rey smiled at him, squeezing his hand.

\---

The flight from Honolulu to Lihue was a short one, lasting thirty-two minutes gate-to-gate.

Kylo never stopped holding her hand.  

\---

Rey closed her eyes and breathed in the rich, green air of Lihue as Kylo loaded their suitcases into the sleek black Explorer he’d rented for the week.

“About an hour and a half, maybe two, and we should be in Takodana with plenty of time to explore and catch the sunset,” he grunted, closing the back gate. “Looks like there’s a flight back to Honolulu at 8:30 in the morning, so I’ll book that once we’re settled in. I’ll have to take the car back, but you can probably borrow Maz’s again if you want to...”

“Stop talking,” Rey said, holding her arms out and reveling in the warm Hawaii sun, the air rich with the scent of palm and coconut. The airport behind them was bustling with activity, and there was a heady fragrance of commerce and travel beneath the green notes, concrete and oil, but the fresh, island air rose above it.

Somehow, with everything that had happened in the last year…

She was home.

\---

Rey could almost pretend they were a normal couple as they made their way towards Takodana, Kylo stubbornly insisting on taking the “back roads,” the two of them fighting over the radio, Rey insisting he stop the car every ten minutes so she could take pictures.

“You’ve seen damn near every square inch of this island,” Kylo groused on the fifth stop, as she moved her phone slowly to take a panorama of a winding mountain road. “I’d bet anything you never even took the pictures from the last trip off your phone.”

Rey huffed as she tucked her phone into her pocket. “Maybe I did and maybe I didn’t.”

Kylo shook his head, but there was a faint hint of a smile on his lips. “You didn’t. You’re a hoarder. Can’t stand to lose anything.”

Rey was quiet as she buckled her seatbelt and adjusted the shoulder strap. “I don’t like to,” she admitted. “But sometimes you don’t have a choice.”

Kylo drummed his fingers on the steering wheel, not looking at her. “Your stuff is still there,” he said after a moment. “In our… my place. I kept waiting, hoping that you’d come back to pick it up. But you never did.”

“I couldn’t see you,” Rey murmured. “I needed… that door needed to stay closed, until I knew I was strong enough not to do what I wanted to do.”

“Which was?”

She leveled him with a long, meaningful look.

Kylo was quiet as he shifted the Explorer into gear and pulled back onto the road.

\---

The mid-afternoon sun was hazy as they drove in silence through the green mountains, and Rey could scarcely keep still in her seat as the valley wound beneath them and the shoreline appeared in the distance.

Somewhere down there was a village with small, tidy houses, delectable food, and the easy, carefree island life that Rey still carried with her to the mainland, even after all that had transpired in the last year.

And there was a tiny bungalow just at the edge of where the waves crashed, where sea birds called, where the hala trees grew wide and tall and ringed with wild island flowers.

 _Here is the place where I was happiest,_ Rey thought as they drove towards Takodana, as the beach grew closer, the mountains taller.

 _Here is the place where I found my home,_ she thought.

She stared at Kylo, at the way his features eased, the color returning to his cheeks, everything about him seeming healthy and hale in the afternoon light of the islands.

 _Here is the place where I loved you_.

\---

“Well, aren’t you a sight for sore eyes!” Maz laughed as Rey leaned down to kiss her cheek. “Didn’t know if you’d be back or not, given what that one’s been up to.” She motioned behind Rey’s back to where Kylo stood hunched in the doorway. “How have you been, Ben? Still being a pain in the _‘okole_ to your poor mother?”

“He actually goes by Kylo Ren now, Maz,” Rey said, rolling her eyes a little. “CEO of First Order and all that.”

“Ben’s fine,” Kylo interjected quietly, and Rey stared at him.

Maz huffed, leaning on her cane. “You mainland kids always have to be difficult. Kylo, Ben, doesn’t make much difference to me as long as you’re coming to see Auntie Maz.” She adjusted her thick glasses, a glint in her eyes. “And you paid in advance, such a sweet boy. Come see me for some _haupia_ tomorrow, I’m making a fresh batch.”

Rey’s eyes lit up at that, and Kylo groaned, scrubbing a hand across his face. “Thanks, Maz.”

They walked in silence to the nearby bungalow, Kylo carrying their suitcases from the Explorer, Rey hefting the familiar brass key. It was a longer walk than she’d remembered, across the dunes, through the green, dappled trees.

But then, it had been a much longer journey back to Takodana than she’d anticipated last year, when…

“Why did you tell her to call you ‘Ben’?” Rey asked as they walked along the beach, Kylo wheeling their suitcases through the sand.

Kylo shrugged. “It’s my name.”

“Officially, yes, but I’ve seen you look like you were going to rip out a man’s spine when he called you that once.” She turned to face him as the wind ruffled her hair. “You put so much time and effort into becoming ‘Kylo Ren,’” she murmured. “Before long, I wasn’t even sure if Ben Solo still existed.”

Kylo stopped, leaning against his suitcase. “That was your problem, there in the beginning,” he said. “You wanted so badly to believe that there were two separate people, the gentle, naive Ben Solo you loved and the bastard Kylo Ren from First Order Capital that you could section out and excise like a malignant tumor.” He spread his arms out, eyes inscrutable. “I’m both and neither. Always have been.”

Rey nodded. “I know that now,” she said. “And I think… I knew that then.”

Kylo shook his head. “But you never accepted it.”

“The hell I didn’t,” Rey said hotly, stepping close to him. “I stayed with you when you were at First Order Capital. I knew you were hurting people… but I knew that you were trying to do better, that there was still good inside you. Kylo and Ben both, in balance.”

She turned and looked out to the rising swells of the ocean, swallowing back the knot of tears forming in her throat. “It was when you turned away from me, when you fully embraced Kylo Ren that I lost you. And I knew that until... unless you found yourself again, unless you found your way back, I couldn’t stand with you. You needed to stand on your own and find out what you truly wanted.”

Rey stared at him, eyes burning with unshed tears. “That's why I left, Ben. Not because I didn’t love you. Because I _did_.”

She stood firm, her fists clenched and head held high as the coastal wind whipped around her. “Because I do,” she said softly.

Her eyes widened as Kylo dropped the suitcases to the sand and gathered her up in his arms, and before she even realized it, his lips were pressed warm and soft to hers, his hands fisted in the material of her T-shirt over her back, her fingers tangled in his hair as she unthinkingly kissed him back.

The air was thick with plumeria and hibiscus, the sound of waves crashing against the shore a soft counterpoint to their harsh breathing, the white sand warm beneath their bare feet as they clung together and kissed in the golden light of the midday sun.

“I couldn’t do it,” Kylo whispered against Rey’s lips, pressing delirious kisses to her cheeks, her jaw, the hollow of her throat. “Rey, I couldn’t do it.”

“What…” His lips felt wonderful against her skin, but still she managed to pull back, her hands firm on his shoulders as she braced him away from her. “What couldn't you do, Ben?”

His eyes were dark, pupils blown wide as he cupped her cheek in his hand. “When I was on the phone in the airport,” he said, still breathing hard. “The board, the Ren council. When they found out I was coming, that there was a chance I might be with my… ex, for lack of a better word, a major player at the Resistance... they asked me to prove my loyalty.”

Rey’s eyes widened. “Your…”

“Immediate foreclosure and destruction of the D’Qar Housing Complex to make way for luxury units. Eviction notices to be served by the end of the week, all tenants tossed out within two. There’s a councilman on their payroll that was prepared to turn a blind eye to it.”

Rey paled, her stomach clenching into knots. “My complex.”

“Yes.”

“You’re…” She stumbled backwards, her eyes narrowed as she angrily scrubbed at her mouth with one hand. “You’re going to put me back on the street. Me and my friends. You’re going to make me…” _Homeless, again_ , and she could already feel the phantom hunger pains gnawing at her insides.

“No,” Kylo said in a rush, catching the hand she swung at his face. “No. Rey, I…”

He hesitated, clutching her hand in both of his. “I called my lawyer and turned over the documents. Phone records, internal accounting records. Everything I had. That’s what I was doing at the airport, sending evidence, contacting the media. Your building is safe. Your friends are safe. _You’re_ safe.”

Rey’s eyes were wide, her shoulders going slack as Ben released her hand and stared at her beseechingly. “I’m not asking you to forgive me,” he said. “And I’m not sure I would if I were you. But I…”

He sat down heavily in the sand, resting his head in his hands. “I couldn’t hurt you again. Not here. Not where we first met. Not where I knew I loved you.”

Rey lowered herself down to sit beside him, reaching out to frame his face with trembling hands. “Ben,” she whispered, her eyes bright and filled with tears, and she leaned forward to kiss him again, pressing him back into the sand, luxuriating as his arms came tightly around her and held her close.

\---

“We’re not letting him into the Resistance,” Poe said bluntly, and Rey sighed and flopped back in the bed.

“He’s giving you every bit of information you need to bring down First Order Capital for good,” she insisted as Kylo stroked her hair, the bare skin of his chest burning-hot and pleasantly sticky with sweat beneath her hands.

“I want to see him stand trial for corruption and racketeering charges first.”

“Which I’m sure he _will_ , once we get back to the mainland. Don’t lose sight of what’s important.”

Poe sighed, and she could hear him drumming his fingertips on the kitchen counter. “Do you trust him?” he asked.

“No,” Rey said honestly, “but I think he deserves a chance to prove that I should. That we should.”

She squirmed as Kylo bit gently at the juncture between her neck and shoulder. “And he’s trying.”

“You sound out of breath, I can guess what he’s _trying_.”

“ _Poe.”_ Rey rolled her eyes. “We’ll talk when I get back to the mainland, okay? Tuesday night. Be at the airport with Finn and Rose. We have a lot to talk about.”

She ended the call before he could protest, setting her phone in airplane mode and stretching out against Kylo’s naked frame. “I meant what I said. About not trusting you.”

“I know.”

“But I want to, in time.”

Kylo nodded as Rey drew absent figures on his chest with her finger. “I knew,” she said after a long moment. “About your… plans for this trip. I found… _it_ the day I left.”

Kylo stared at her. “It?”

Rey took a deep breath and nodded. “The ring.”

Kylo stilled beneath her, and she watched him swallow hard. “Oh.”

She rolled onto her side, propping herself up on her elbows and staring at him. “Were you going to ask me to marry you, Ben Solo?” she asked with a soft smile.

He bunched the thin sheet in one hand, avoiding her gaze. “The thought crossed my mind,” he admitted after a long moment. “I wasn’t sure about it, if it would be… too soon, too much to ask, but I bought it. Just in case.”

His eyes were soft and dark as he looked at her, and he reached out with his free hand to stroke through her hair. “What would you have said, do you think?”

Rey worried her lip between her teeth, gazing up at the thatched ceiling of the bungalow. “I think… back then, I would have thought about it. And I would have said yes, and it would have all gone horribly wrong and I’d be lying here with my ex-husband instead of my ex-boyfriend.”

“Ex?” Kylo asked, trailing the hand at her hair down the side of her throat.

“Ex, not-current, _complicated_ , whatever.” Rey sighed and lowered herself down to curl in against his chest once more. “We had a lot of growing to do,” she murmured. “Still do. A lot of healing.”

Kylo was quiet, resting his hand at the small of her back. “Kauai is the oldest island, you know,” he said finally. “Millions of years. Not as flashy as some of the others, but it has good bones and deep roots. It endures.”

Rey stared up at him as he gently rubbed her back.

“I’m sure it’ll still be here when you’re ready,” he continued. “When we both are.”

Rey ducked her head against a sudden wellspring of tears, nodding firmly against his chest.

“However many years from now?” she asked, closing her eyes as he folded his hand against hers.

“Back at the place where we first met,” he finished, and leaned down to kiss her.

\---

They sat side-by-side on the steps to the bungalow the next morning, steaming cups of coffee in their hands, watching the sky turn orange-purple in the early morning light.

“Did you change your flight?” Rey asked nonchalantly, taking a long sip from her mug.

Kylo cursed under his breath, reaching for his phone. “Fuck. Let me see if there’s anything for later this afternoon.”

“No, I mean…” Rey set her mug to the side and took his phone in hand, tossing it behind her. “We _are_ already here, and everything is already paid for for the week.”

She tangled her fingers in his hair, staring up at him with shining-bright eyes. “And we never did finish that tour of the botanical gardens last year.”

The waves of the Pacific lapped gently at the shore, the air thick with the scent of wildflowers and sea birds calling at the horizon as Rey pulled Kylo, pulled  _Ben_ down into a warm kiss, their hands clasped and hearts beating together as the sun rose high and dawn broke over the island shore.

\---

“Ladies and gentlemen, welcome aboard flight 1977, nonstop service from Honolulu to New York.”

Rey snuggled into Ben’s embrace as the plane gained altitude, slowly taking them away from the islands that had seen their first strained meeting and witnessed their slow pull back together.

Ben remained in close contact with his lawyers as he and Rey slowly grew back together on the white-sand shores of Takodana, once again charting steep trails through the mountains, crashing through the surf, cataloging bright-hued wildflowers (Rey had made Ben a flower crown of wild plumeria, which he’d begrudgingly worn for half a day until Maz crowed about how beautiful he looked).

Legally, Ben was in a gray area, given his complicity with the corrupt dealings of First Order Capital, now splashed across the front page of every New York daily and a staple on the local news. But his lawyers had assured him that whistleblower protections likely would apply, and not to get ahead of himself with worry quite yet.

That had been easy enough, with the island sun beating down on them, bathing in the warm waves…

And the two of them together, for the first time in almost a year, healing themselves, healing each other in the shade of the rolling mountains, in salt air and fragrant greens.

“Do you want to move back in?” Ben asked, pressing a sleepy kiss to Rey’s temple as the red-eye flight continued gaining altitude, the bright lights of Oahu winking into the distance beneath them.

Rey hummed, playing her fingers over the back of his hand. “Maybe just a drawer, to start.”

“You left most of your stuff behind last year. You have _many_ drawers.”

“Well, make me a dedicated overnight drawer and we’ll talk.” She smiled up at him as he drew his arm around her shoulders, his thumb rubbing over her scar, the reminder of that first tenuous night, that first warm breach between them marked into her skin.

“Deal.” She was still smiling as Ben tilted her face up for a gentle kiss.

They broke apart as the lead flight attendant came by their row. “Anything you need here?” she asked with a smile.

They looked at each other, all soft smiles and the promise of something new, something bright just beyond the horizon, beyond the islands, waiting for them on the other side.

“No,” Rey said simply, squeezing Ben’s hand. “I think we have everything we need.”

**FIN**

 


End file.
